


In Tangles

by writer_by_the_window



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: F/F, Fluff and Angst, Friends to Lovers, Happy Ending, Lesbian Ty Lee (Avatar), Pining, Through the Years, short and sweet, someone get these girls some therapy, weird little gays
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-21
Updated: 2021-01-21
Packaged: 2021-03-12 18:46:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28890072
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writer_by_the_window/pseuds/writer_by_the_window
Summary: In the moonlight, Ty Lee looks like a mythical thing, flipping and curving as she cartwheeled across the grass. It’s the first summer in Azula’s young life that she hasn’t wanted to draw the curtains shut and sulk in a bundle of silk and cashmere. This girl, lithe and loud and annoying, has wrecked her plans.Flash fiction: Tyzula through the years.
Relationships: Azula/Ty Lee (Avatar), Suki/Zuko(background) (Avatar)
Comments: 3
Kudos: 46





	In Tangles

Tangle #1

In the moonlight, Ty Lee looks like a mythical thing, flipping and curving as she cartwheeled across the grass. It’s the first summer in Azula’s young life that she hasn’t wanted to draw the curtains shut and sulk in a bundle of silk and cashmere. This girl, lithe and loud and annoying, has wrecked her plans. She allows herself one small tantrum, a burst of blue flame behind her back where the guards won’t see---she is eight, you see, and she has already learned to keep herself at a simmer. She has watched and she has imitated, but here is something she cannot do: a cartwheel.

  
Azula has never failed at anything until now.

  
Ty Le stops in mid-motion, standing on the palms of her hands as she smiles.

  
“It’s easy,” she says. “‘Just put your hands on the ground, jump, and gravity does the rest!”

  
“A princess does not get grass stains on her trousers,” Azula fires back, but part of her wishes she could get mud all over these clothes that her mother laid out just for her.

  
Trying once was enough. If it didn’t come to her, fine. She had things Ty Lee would never have. Droves of servants, fewer restless siblings, the gift of fire dancing across her knuckles like a pack of playing cards or a sleight of hand.

  
She was more than this, playing in the grass with other children.

  
She would scorch the fields and boil the seas someday.

  
So she watches Ty Lee prance and imitates her butterfly smile.

* * *

Tangle #2

“You’re it, Zuko!”

  
Azula points at her older brother, meek and awkward despite the blood of dragons running through his veins. He is so easy to manipulate, too delightful to target, and she can feel her mother’s gaze across the palace. Her golden son, so ignorant of the fact that the world is violence. He hasn’t noticed yet, but she has seen cruelty simmering in her father’s eyes, and she knows the metal that makes up rulers. She is ten and already knows that war is nothing but a game of strategy, and games of strategy are just like war.

  
She grabs Mai and whispers in her ear. Unlike Ty Lee, Mai is so malleable and quiet about it, never questioning her even if she wants to. She’s older than Azula but crumples to her command just like a young child. At thirteen, she is willowy and bored, but Azula’s request lights something in her. Anxiety and fear: not excitement, but it’s something.

  
Azula animates her. This idea will stick to both of them for four years, unshakeable until it suddenly crumbles.

  
When Mai throws the knives at Zuko’s head, Ty Lee shrieks with excitement. Azula smiles, glad to have impressed her in some secondhand way. She is becoming a consistent presence these days, and Azula suspects that Ursa has something to do with it. An attempt to make her only daughter softer, more prone to affection.

Ty Lee laughs. Maybe it’s working after all.

* * *

Tangle #3

She’s gone.

  
It happens so quickly that Azula can barely read the letter. One day Ty Lee is suspiciously absent from her endless parade of sisters, always the one tangled head of hair amidst six pristine braids. Then she is gone without ever saying goodbye, and Azula is hearing of dancing platypus-bears in a letter sealed with bright pink wax. Did she know that wolf-bats could juggle knives? Did she know that there was an elite school for acrobats on Ember Island?

  
This particular detail enrages young Azula to no end. What was more important, more special than the summers they’d spent on that island, giggling in the tidepools about Mai’s silly crush on Zuko? How could the circus have a firmer grip on Ty Lee than she did?

  
She doesn’t know who will coax a smile out of her now. The bottle of ink crashes to the ground, and Azula knows she won’t be writing an answer today.

  
Sixty-five letters. Two and a half years. No reply. Wounded pride.

* * *

Tangle #4

How is she real? Azula is about to fall off of her mongoose lizard, not that she would ever show such weakness in front of her companions. Chasing the Avatar has brought her closer to the brink of exhaustion than anything she’s ever attempted. Ty Lee, though, is still bright-eyed and perky, her spine upright and easy while Mai and Azula slouch, glower. Azula is reminded of the moonlight that highlighted her lean figure all those years ago, but in this light, Ty Lee looks more like a vengeance goddess than a child. There’s a steely glint in her eye---she must have picked up from years of training and traveling.

  
She doesn’t sleep much, either. Azula has noticed that difference, at least, held onto it as something she can catalog and file away. The other change seemed so overwhelming, so sudden; it was as if she expected Ty Lee to remain the same after two years, but she has been forged into a blade almost as sharp as Azula. Almost. Gone is the girl who used to sleep until noon and tell joke after awful joke.

  
But when she catches Azula’s eye in the darkness, she sticks out her tongue, snapping her face back to normal before Mai can notice. Azula hides her giggle behind her sleeve.

  
The shadows hide her soft blush just as well.

* * *

Tangle #5

  
Azula thinks she knows misery after all these months in this cell, sitting under the shadow of her ever-present mother, but Ty Lee’s presence wrecks her so badly she is afraid to lift her head. To add insult to injury, she is dressed in the robes of a Kyoshi Warrior, accompanied by Suki. Azula’s memories of their siege of Ba Sing Se are quickly corrupted, seeing her stand there with tears streaking that all-too-familiar makeup.

  
“What do you want me to say?” Azula snaps. “Have you come here to apologize? Or have you come to gloat just like everyone else? Parading around with your new friends while I’m behind bars?”

  
Ty Lee dabs at her face, eyes cast to the floor. Is she ashamed, or is it some deeper, more carnal emotion? Does she know how badly she’s broken Azula’s heart?

  
Or has Azula broken hers?

  
Her braid is even more frayed than usual, barely held together by her new green ribbon. Suki is so sleek and put-together by comparison that Azula almost has to laugh. Ty Lee will always stand out if she is made to be part of a matching set.

  
“I just wanted to see you,” Ty Lee said slowly, “to convince myself that there’s nothing more I can do for you.”

  
Nothing more? The girl who taught her to smile, laugh, hug, skip stones, balance an apple on her head? The only person who did not shrink back in fear when she produced fire?

  
Azula nods. It’s the only motion she is capable of, here in the dark in her chains.

  
Very well.

* * *

Tangle #6

  
It has been four years since the last time Azula saw Ty Lee, and now, standing on Kyoshi Island with her bag and a neat knot in her hair, she wishes they had never met before at all.

  
After all this time to think, to remember, Azula knows. She loves Ty Lee more than she has ever loved anyone else, not even her father, and she wishes so dearly that she had a second chance. That Ty Lee would not remember the atrocities Azula committed, would not remember how she had abused her peers, would not remember her name. Azula could be a new recruit; Ty Lee could fall for her, one line of her face at a time. They would study each other’s palms, Ty Lee’s round and Azula’s slender. They would whisper in the dark, orphans of that old, archaic Fire Nation.

  
When Suki comes out to greet her---yes, I got your letter---Azula dispels the fantasies she’s clung to for so long and grounds herself. At the very least, she’s here. Showing up. Apologizing.

  
“Are you ready?” Suki’s eyebrow raises quizzically.

  
Azula breathes in and lets the burning embers between her ribs finally fizzle out.

  
“Yes.”

* * *

Tangle #7

It’s the night before Zuko’s wedding. Suki is going to be a radiant bride, half cloaked in Fire Nation silk and dressed in a ceremonial Kyoshi kimono. It’s a rare sight to see a Warrior married, even rarer to see her become the Fire Lady. Azula wonders for a brief moment what it would have been like if she had kept the throne, if she were getting married today. She lingers longer on the idea of Ty Lee in royal wedding silk.

  
The other girl perches on the bed beside her, chattering incessantly like always. The familiar cadence of her speech pulls Azula away from those dangerous thoughts, further from that long-remembered disproving glance from her mother. _Azula, why can’t you share your toys with your brother?_ Ursa would have been proud if she could see him now.

  
Maybe, just maybe, she would be proud of Azula too.

  
“Can you help me with my braid?” Ty Lee says, handing Azula her brush.

  
There is nothing Azula loves more than Ty Lee’s hair unbound. A braid gives the illusion of tidiness, but when Ty Lee’s hair spills down her back it’s uncontrollable, frizzy, snarled and flowing like her own personal body of water.

  
She starts at the roots, just like always. Carefully, gently, she pulls through each tangle, brushing her fingers gently against Ty Lee’s scalp. Ty Lee leans catlike into her touch, and Azula can’t help but lean back.

  
Before she knows it, Ty Lee’s hair curtains her face, and she finds herself with her back against the mattress. Ty Lee’s face is shining and beautiful above her, full of the same questions that have lingered in Azula’s mind since the tidepools at Ember Island.

  
“Yes,” Azula can barely breathe out before Ty Lee’s lips cover hers.


End file.
